Tag: Books

2025 in Books

~ Veselin ~ 15 Comments

Okay! The moment I’ve been waiting for, the 2025 awards for best books on Veselin.blog 😀 These are not written in 2025, only read this year, but who cares?

Best Thriller

  • Frieda McFadden’s The Housemaid – first exposure to Frieda McFadden was a shock to me. Being stuck with Lee Child-like characters for so long created space for this pleasant surprise. Looking forward to seeing the movie.

Best Apocalypse & Sci-Fi

Best Non-Fiction

Best Fantasy and Best Author

  • The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin and The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin. The thrid part is not translated yet but the first two were both best books I read in the months I finished them. Nora Jemisin was the best author I encountered this year with four five-star books out of four. It was a close call with Nicci French but they had some disappointing books.

Best Series

Best Sci-Fi and Best Book

Overall, I finished 91 books, according to Goodreads (a few more because not all books are on Goodreads). It was a good year for reading.

December in Books

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

December will be remembered for the book fair, not the books I read. I bought more than ten and finished seven real ones and one unreal, leaving my pile of unread books growing.

Best

  • Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine – 5/5. If there’s one book that stood out, it was this one. An intense serial-killer thriller and the first in a series. I would have bought the second immediately if it had been available in Bulgarian.
  • The Detective by Matthew Reilly – 5/5. This was not a sci-fi, who could’ve imagined. Matthew Reilly didn’t disappoint despite that.
  • Where the Evil Dwells by Clifford D. Simak – 5/5. The Roman world turned into a fantasy world after an evil invasion. Features a troll who lost his bridge and bloodthirsty unicorns.
  • The OC by D.P. Lyle – 4/5. Another intense serial-killer thriller. However, less intense than the other one.
  • The Last Days of Kira Mulan by Nicci French – 4/5. The Nicci French duo wrote an activist thriller, where the main character was not Detective Maud O’Conner. Still a good story, but a bit heavy.

Worst

  • The Hunger of the Gods by John Gwynne – 3.5/5. A nice fantasy world with some cool characters shuffling around on a map and engaging in pointless battles. The second part of the series didn’t add much to the story and could’ve been skipped.
  • Ninja by David Walters – 4/5 but objectively, worse than the previous one. A prequel to the Way of the Tiger series that fit well with the series as a feeling, but not as well as a story.
  • Murder on Mars-4 by Snejana Tasheva – a short story gamebook. It has 20-ish episodes, 1 or 2 actual choices that didn’t impact the outcome, and a hidden episode. I didn’t enjoy the AI use, the story, the size, and the price, and only completed it because it was very short. 1/5.

This concludes my year in books, as the two books I’m currently reading aren’t even halfway through.

Happy New Year! 🍾 🥂

The Detective by Matthew Reilly

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A private investigator reopens a cold case involving a serial killer who has been abducting victims for over 150 years.

I’m a fan of Matthew Reilly and his wildly unrealistic thrillers. Based on the description of this one, I was expecting at the very least aliens. It turned out to be far less extraordinary than that, but still very much in the right style and grandiosity. An easy, fast read. 5/5, although you should not expect depth of characters or anything like that. Despite the heavy topic, it’s mostly a bubble gum thriller.

The book below is The Hunger of the Gods, for scale and color.

The Hunger of the Gods by John Gwynne

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

A wise person once said that in trilogies, the first book is good, because it builds the world. The last book is good, because it resolves the story. The middle book is just a filler, because these books come in threes.

The Hunger of the Gods is a second book in a trilogy. It comes with many traits typical of such books. There is no world building, apart from the description of some larger cities. Few of the story lines conclude. There’s a bit of a character development but it is only in the villains.

The world John Gwynne built is like an Orconomics spin-off with vikings. Lots of creatures, created by the dead gods and living around. Lots of fighting with swords and spears. Rage and berserk-style battles where the Hulks never die. The mains wolf-out at the right moment to save the day. A reader in a mood for super-heroic stories may appreciate all of that. I see that I gave John Gwynne’s first book 5/5, and even have another on my shelves at home.

Pros:

  • The world is intriguing, despite not developing much since book 1
  • Given that power comes from the blood, the physical strength doesn’t mean much. Men and women are equal, with the most fearsome warriors being women
  • Orka Skullsplitter and Elvar Firebrand have some nice POV chapters.
  • The dead gods are wiser than expected

Cons:

  • The whole story relies on almighty slave collars. They are used to bind even gods and sorcerers, allowing people with no special gifts to dominate beings of incredible power. This isn’t great and reminds me of the worst parts of the Wheel of Time.
  • Reckless behavior is rewarded with Breca and Varg No-sense making very little sense.
  • It’s too long.

Overall, I think it’s readable but I’m discouraged to get the continuation.

3.5*/5

The publisher featured the dead god Ulfrir on the cover. In the book, it is described as wolf-sized but can expand at will.

USA’94

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

After featuring graffiti with USA’94, here’s a book about USA’94, published about a week ago. It’s size A4 and lets you replay the football world cup from 1994. It looks very complicated to read. I’m not sure if I can make it despite watching the championship and knowing roughly what happened. It has 500 episodes and about half-a-book of rules about what to do with these 500 episodes.

I find it cool that people can come up with such ideas, publish them, and potentially even find someone to read them.